Vampyr, Healing Grenades, and Shields - An In-depth Analysis

Borderlands 3 Moze the Gunner
#1

Greeting folks, Let me start off by saying if you haven’t finished “The Kevin Konundrum” do yourself a favor and NEVER complete it. At least until we get an actual test dummy. I had originally taken off Mayhem mode and went to a highly populated area to do some testing, but everything died too fast and I was getting inconsistent results. I couldn’t use Kevin because I had completed it to show my wife, the name Kevin is an inside joke for us, and I had to restart the mission just to do these tests. After Chapter 11 “!!!” you can finally get the Kevin mission again.

Anyway, I wanted to do some testing with the skill Vampyr and Pull the Holy Pin with the Mind Sweeper COM and Short Fuse. Along the way to the Kevin mission I noticed some other things I wanted to test. So lets dive right in. I’ll start of with the:

Healing Grenades.

Currently in the game, some grenades can have random effects that will give health for Shield based on damage dealt. These are Transfusion
and Generator. The former gives Health, the latter gives Shield. The Transfusion effect does work as intended on health, and on shield when using the Bloodletter COM. The Generator only heals from shield damage, which diminishes it’s value. The healing from a Transfusion was significantly more than Vampyr after testing. Details below.

Further discussion on the healing from transfusion grenades is here: Vampyr, Healing Grenades, and Shields - An In-depth Analysis
Transfusion only works on health damage and Generator only works on shield damage. No grenade effect will work on armor damage.

Mind Sweeper

I can confirm with @sammantixbb that Mind Sweeper COM does work with Vampyr both from gun crits as well as Grenade crits. It would be around 20% of missing health for every explosion.

Short Fuse

I can confirm that the secondary explosion does not work with Vampyr. Not much to say here.

Vampyr

So I was able to get 20% of missing health from grenades or Mind Sweeper COM with this skill. However, when I put on a Bloodletter COM I don’t get nearly as much shield as I thought initially. I was expecting to get around 20% of my missing shield. Instead I was typically get around 2% of missing shield with a Transformer, no relic, and one point in Thin Red Line.

Max Health with no boost and no Guardian Rank: 5948
Max Health with Bloodletter COM with 1 point in Thin Red Line: 4758.4
Current shield at moment of testing in one scenario: 91

Possible expected outcomes (before testing) from one grenade explosion:

{If missing health is based on missing base Shield}
( 11659 - 91 = 11568) [Missing shield] ( .2 x 11568 = 2312.6 ) [Expected shield return]

{If missing health is based on actual missing health}
( 5948 - 4758.4 = 1189.6 ) [Missing health] ( .2 x 1189.6 = 237.92) [Expected shield return]

Actual:

Actual tested shield healing after grenade explosions: 329
( 329 - 91 = 238 )

So currently Vampyr’s healing is scaling of off missing health. If I equip a Dealthless Relic I can only get a MAX healing of:

( 5948 - 1 = 5947 ) [missing health] ( .2 x 5947 = 1189.4 ) [Expected shield return per grenade explosion]

Which is nothing compared to the what the shield capacity can be. This needs to be taken into consideration when making a build and is why some people are saying Vampyr isn’t working. The amount being healed per explosion is so small they might no notice it unless they have a grenade with multiple stacking MIRV/Clone/Bounce/etc. effects.

How do I increase my healing from Vampyr?

Currently the only way to increase healing from Vampyr is to use health bonuses. The healing for each explosion is calculated as:

[ ( Max Boosted Health - Current Health ) x ( .04 x Points in Vampyr ) ]

So Guardian Rank, +% Health, and +# Health will all increase the amount of healing received. This also means that negative health effects also decrease the amount of healing received. Turtle bonuses lower max health and thus lower total healing received on a shield.

However, that does not mean Turtle bonus are useless. If you are not using a Bloodletter COM or Dealthless Relic, you will still heal for 20% of your missing health (with 5 points in Vampyr). You can also still use a Bloodletter COM and make use of Transfusion grenades with the larger shield bonues from Turtle.

To be Tested

Community

Thanks to @Prismatic for doing his [Guide] Moze's Health and Shield Calculation Breakdown just in time for all this. Testing was done in TVHM no mayhem on Kevin. All testing confirmed with Google spreadsheet to verify formulas with real time data. I can adjust formatting or help explain to anyone if the equations are hard to follow.

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#2

Kevin wouldn’t give shields because he has no shields. Generator nades Heal Shields based on Shield Damage (really useless on Eden 6)

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#3

Okay, I didn’t know that. The card says base on damage dealt, so I assumed it meant all damage. I’ll edit that part.

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#4

Teamwork! Lol. I refused to use Generator grenades for that very reason. Like, I run shock weapons a lot (I like the blue effects, I’m a child, and Gaige habits die hard) so I almost never have shields to steal.

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#5

Makes my day that the works been useful :smiley:.

I’ll get you you linked in the community resources in a minute.

Do you have data on how transfusions compare to Vampyr per hit?

I really think the community is sleeping on just how important health upgrades are to Moze. I keep meaning to get hold of a Mendel’s Multi Vitamin for testing.

With the way thin red line works you essentially double possible health boosts by converting them to shields.

Additve health boosts are multiplied by things like Vladof ingenuity and Phalanx Doctrine, whereas things like the front loaders boosts don’t get any of the shield capacity boosts.

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#6

OH! Big test idea. I am gonna take one of my black hole nades into normal normal. Let 5 skags chew me up. Then drop a black hole.

If my theory is correct. Five enemies with a single Vampyr grenade proc at 5 points SHOULD give me full health.

#7

Considering how precise the timing window is on things like shotgun hits I suspect that hitting five skags simulataneously is near enough impossible.

#8

Black hole grenade will do it though :joy:

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#9

Keep me posted, I’d love to be wrong about it. :laughing:

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#10

Cable people are here now fixing the wire, so, tonight will be the night!

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#11

I wasn’t recording the data for Transfusion grenades. Mostly just seeing if they worked with Bloodletter and why the Generator doesn’t work, which was solved.

I can, however, tell you that on a single target a Transfusion grenade with a Bloodletter would heal significantly more of my shield than Vampyr does even when missing 99% of your base health.

I need to find some more items for testing so I can see if boosting health effects the amount you get healed. Just depends if it only reads base or boosted. This would be a negative for a shield with a turtle part on it as it would lower your health, and thus healing.

Kind of goes into the argument of should it be based on damage or percent missing. Percent missing would make sense if a bloodletter converted it to missing shield.

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#12

Hahaha, got it! I got five skags. I was so scared because it looked like one was getting away. But I got it. Took me two tries. Video uploading soon

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#13

While I’m waiting on this upload, something occurs to me.

Were people Getting trickle healed by a hex hitting one enemy? Or. Was a mirv hex registering each separate mirv as part of the original grenade so that 6 different grenades were acting as one and thereby making your health constantly full?

#14

The first one failed, hit four but the last one does it

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#15

I’ve not played much with a hex but for the stormfront it was always just a fast rate of ~1200 shield added per hit.

#16

I can only imagine lol

you didn’t name your… Kevin did you ? That would be too funny if since it’s the Kevin Kondunrum and all… if you didn’t just tell me you did.

#17

No, she named the frogs that hang out outside our door Kevin or Gerald. Over the years we just kept adding numbers to the end of the name and talking to them.

So the “My Kevins!” thing was a bit of an inside joke with us.

2 Likes
#18

Oh, big implication of my Test: the “missing health” percent healed is based on how many enemies you hit with the grenade.

At 5 points in Vampyr. Hitting one enemy will heal 20% of missing health. 2 enemies one nade will do 40% of missing health. 3 for 60, 4 for 80, 5 for 100.

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#19

Turtle reduces you max health by 10% per 40% shield addition; it does not reserve health like the Frontloader or Thin Red Line.

To get the most out of Vampyr, you want to be 1 hp with the highest max hp possible.

#20

I know, but I need to test if the addition or reduction of health from base health actually makes a different and if the percent remains constant. I assume it will effect it, but I never make a claim until I can physically see the numbers and quantify the data.

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